Pharma baffled by NHS’ moving target
pharmafile | April 17, 2012 | News story | Sales and Marketing | CCG, Cameron, Lansley, NHS, reforms
The reforms of England’s health service have now finally been passed into law, but the pharma industry will struggle to get to grips with the new set-up for years to come.
Confusion about who is leading the new NHS, and the speed of change is making life very difficult for the UK pharma industry, according to the leader of one Clinical Commissioning Group.
David Thorne, head of the newly merged Newcastle Gateshead Alliance CCG, says pharma companies have been trying to proactively engage with the emerging commissioning leaders in the NHS, but are being hindered by confusion surrounding the reforms.
The new Health and Social Care Act, which finally become law in March, puts CCGs in charge of £60 billion of the NHS budget from 1 April 2013. But whilst some are expected to be ready to take over then, many will need much longer before they are ‘authorised’ by the new NHS Commissioning Board.
Thorne cites one example of pharma companies wanting to identify and build roles with hospital doctors and nurses who will play a role in each CCG.
The addition of these roles to the GP-led CCGs was made following the ‘listening exercise’ conducted by the Future Forum in June last year.
Policy versus reality
Thorne said that pharma companies were keen to engage with these new members, and marketing managers had created new plans to meet them and build relationships ahead of 2013.
But the NHS in the Newcastle area says that, though the government has said these members are key members of the CCG, they will in fact have little say in the prescribing budget.
David Thorne is an ex-pharmaceutical industry executive, having previously worked for Pfizer and Sanofi UK in a market access role, making him more sensitive to the problems the industry is facing amid the reforms. Consequently he told several pharma firms that building relationships with these additional members of CCGs would be pointless.
The same occurred with the introduction of clinical senates, another idea added to the Bill after the listening exercise of last summer. The senates were intended to hold CCGs to account, but many in the health service admit they do not know what role the senates will play – and say there are already enough new organisations and bodies to deal with.
This suggests that clinical senates are set to be one of the first aspects of the hugely complicated reforms which will be quietly ignored and left to wither on the vine.
Thorne says he has also put pharma companies straight on the likely fate of senates – a clear example of a gap between the government policy and the actual implementation opening up almost immediately.
Thorne advises pharma companies to focus their attentions on CCG, but even this will be less than straightforward. There is great variation in structures and management between CCGs, which will mean pharma must spend a great deal of time identifying the real future decision-makers in the patchwork of England’s CCGs.
One obvious problem is that these are a moving target – the total number of CCGs currently stands at number 227, a total which has continued to fall over the last 12 months as groups are pushed into mergers.
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